Review: Hostile Territory (2022) – A Gritty Western With Heart and Gunpowder

Hostile Territory (2022) might sound like your standard post-Civil War Western, but beneath the dust and rifle smoke lies a surprisingly emotional story about redemption, survival, and what it means to fight your way back home.

Set against the harsh backdrop of a fractured America, the film follows Jack Calgrove, a former Union soldier who returns from war only to discover that his children have been mistakenly sent west on an orphan train. What follows is a desperate race across lawless land, where danger lurks in every canyon and morality is as grey as the smoke from a Colt revolver.

The direction by Brian Presley, who also stars in the lead role, gives the film a grounded, no-nonsense tone. You can feel the grit under every bootstep, and the emotional stakes are high enough to give the gunfights real weight. The child actors give solid performances, and there’s a sense of earnestness throughout that sets it apart from more cynical Westerns.

Sure, some of the dialogue leans a little heavy into the genre clichés, and the pacing dips in the middle act — but when the third act kicks in, it rides hard all the way to the finish.

Final Verdict: Hostile Territory is a solid modern Western with a heart as big as the frontier. It may not reinvent the wagon wheel, but it rolls forward with purpose and grit.

Rating: 7.8/10
Tagline (made-up): “In a land with no law, a father makes his own.”